The World: Culture of Dependency; Another Challenge in Iraq: Giving Up Food Rations

By JOHN TIERNEY

Published: October 12, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq—
THE overhaul of welfare in America may seem complicated, but it has been simple compared with the challenge in Iraq. In the United States, the people who relied on public assistance were defined as the underclass. In Iraq, they're the entire nation.

To Saddam Hussein, a culture of dependency was not a social problem but a political plus. Father Saddam, as he liked to be called, provided citizens with subsidized homes, cheap energy and, most important, free food. After international sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, he started a program that now uses 300 government warehouses and more than 60,000 workers to deliver a billion pounds of groceries every month -- a basket of rations guaranteed to every citizen, rich or poor.

American and Iraqi authorities are now struggling to get out of the grocery-delivery business without letting anyone go hungry. They're trying to find a politically practical way of replacing the rations with cash payments or some version of food stamps. Planners would ultimately like to see the aid given only to the needy, but for starters they would simply like to get all Iraqis accustomed to shopping for themselves.

''We need to replace the food program and attack the dependency culture created by Saddam Hussein,'' said Barham Salih, the prime minister of a Kurdish section of northern Iraq, which also receives the rations. ''This culture has become one of the biggest obstacles to rebuilding Iraq. Everybody expects the U.S. to turn on its supercomputer and make all of our problems go away, but we should be learning to do things by ourselves.''

You can get a sense of the challenge facing reformers by visiting Zayuna, one of Baghdad's most affluent neighborhoods. While many Iraqis -- 60 percent of the population, by some estimates -- depend heavily on the food rations, the residents of Zayuna generally do not.

In fact, many of them disdain the items in the basket, which includes rice, flour, beans, sugar, oil, salt, powdered milk, tea, soap and laundry detergent. But most residents still make sure to collect -- or have their servants collect -- their monthly rations from the program's agent operating in their neighborhood.

Then they take the items they don't want and drive to a roadside kiosk at the nearby Thulatha market, where vendors are legally allowed to buy the rationed groceries and resell them to less picky consumers. After the citizens sell their government-issued groceries, they either pocket the cash or apply the proceeds toward the purchase of better products available at the market, like olive oil to replace the cheaper soy oil.

To an outsider watching people make these exchanges, it might seem odd for people in Mercedeses and BMW's to be profiting from government food aid, especially since the original justification for the aid has vanished. The program began as an emergency response to United Nations trade sanctions, and was later supplemented with provisions from the separate oil-for-food program of the United Nations. Even though the sanctions have ended, the program is still considered indispensable.

''It would be a disaster if the program ended,'' said Haidar Hassan, one of the vendors at the market, and he was not merely speaking of his own business as a middleman. ''If the government did not give out all this rice, there would be a shortage of rice in the market.'' He predicted the price of a kilogram (about two pounds) would quadruple from its current price of 10 cents.

His clientele was similarly alarmed. ''My economic situation is good, but even I could not afford the new higher prices if they stopped the program,'' said Thaeir Ezadden, a police captain whose salary had recently more than quintupled, to $150 per month, thanks to the new pay scales instituted by American authorities.

Mr. Ezadden said he might be willing to go along with one change currently being considered -- giving everyone cash payments instead of rations -- but only if it was accompanied by more central planning.

''If they gave out money instead of food,'' he said, ''the Americans would have to establish an office in the Ministry of Trade to control all the food prices. Otherwise businessmen would import food and make a profit with high prices. The Americans should also give jobs to everyone who needs one.''

Economists, while acknowledging the need for protecting consumers during the transition, say that a market economy would provide food much more cheaply and efficiently than the current government-run system. But the American and Iraqi officials in charge of the program know that economists' arguments are not going to assuage the fears of citizens who have forgotten how the market works.

''We want to phase out the rations program, but we must take into account the concerns of our most vulnerable citizens,'' said Fakhrldin Rashan, the acting officer in charge of the Ministry of Trade. ''The transition to a different system of payments must be done slowly.''

Planners are considering gradually replacing some groceries with cash welfare payments or some version of food stamps that could be redeemed at local markets. Besides giving shoppers more choices, the change would also help Iraqi merchants and farmers, because consumers would presumably buy more local fruits and vegetables instead of relying on the many imported foods in their rations.

Mr. Rashan said no major changes in the program would take place before next year, although one small part of it will be privatized soon. The drivers who now deliver the food to government warehouses will essentially be given their trucks and then paid as independent contractors instead of as government employees.

But that still leaves close to 20,000 other government employees in the food program, plus another 45,000 distributors who dole out the food at neighborhood storefronts. Any change in the program is sure to bring protests from the affected workers as well as from citizens accustomed to having their shopping done for them.

''People expected the Americans to come in and create a better rations system,'' said Robin Raphel, a State Department official who has advised Iraq's Trade Ministry. ''But we can never make the system work as well as it did when the whole country was a command-and-control system run from the center, and even then it was profoundly inefficient. We want to introduce market forces and get people used to making their own decisions.''

After Iraqis adjust to shopping for themselves with food stamps or welfare payments, planners would like to wean the more affluent citizens from any kind of aid. But no one expects American or Iraqi officials to take that step anytime soon.

''We have to be very careful with our food program,'' said Mr. Rashan, of the Trade Ministry. ''We already have enough social and political problems in this country. We don't want to create any more.''

Mr. Rashan, incidentally, said that he himself has not been picking up rations for the past several months, but not out of any ideological qualms.

''I've been so busy with the new responsibilities here that I haven't had time to pick up the basket,'' he said. ''But I hope I'll find the time next month.''

Photo: A month's worth of food for an Iraqi family. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqis became used to government handouts for basic needs. (Photo by Justin Lane for The New York Times)